Reading List: A yelling cure?

Yelling: The Cause, The Casualty, The Cure
By Lorrie Flem

Once my second child came along the lack of sleep seriously caught up with me and manifested it self as a loud angry mama - which I am not happy with. Do you know the feeling? It's like the sleep deprived mama is never able to really get a handle on things and do what she wants... so that being said when this short ebook was on a free promotion I grabbed it.

I liked that the book was organized in 12 steps and that the first one was to pray over this whole endeavor. So that being said, if you are not a believer, you might not like this book. Or you might love it since the first step is to pray!

Then I came to this line, "Look at it this way, if it isn't life-threatening, if the house is not ablaze, if it is not time to call 911, or if the child you are yelling at is not half a mile away, then yelling is the wrong choice and not worth the cost." And my first thought was, yeah I know, that is why I'm reading this! There were a few of these kinds of points that I felt like were obvious and just made me feel worse, because I know yelling is wrong, and I don't want to yell, I don't need a stranger to tell me that! And this thought was before the 12 steps even begun, not a good sign to me...

The second step is all about training but the chapter is so short and ends with the point to "train" your children correctly to avoid many triggers. Flem's main point is to train children and says to look to her other books for these concepts, nothing else. Not really a big help.

Then come triggers- basically a list of possible triggers - again not a huge help - but I'm going with these first steps as part of her causes, which the title told me to expect. The biggest hang up here was another line that rubbed me wrong - "Sometimes going through the motions is enough to jump-start the real emotion..." Umm let me just say, if this mindset was enough, why would I have to pray? Why would I pick up this book?

Photo credit

Luckily the book started to change gears slightly here, with more on the cure...

Focus on taking care of yourself- not always possible when you have little ones (like under 18 months, at least) but yes I agreed, focusing on my health does result in a happier mama. And Flem does list some, although obvious, simple things you can do to help do this.

Next action step- take care of your kids - well that's what I'm trying to do - right? I mean why else would I care about ceasing this horrible situation?

There are a few more steps, and every one has practical steps to try to incorporate into your life, if you aren't already. And this is a super quick read. However she never shares anything groundbreaking (I mean is there such a thing as groundbreaking steps for stopping a bad habit?) and I often felt patronized in her wording of the obvious.

I'm not sure if I recommend reading this, or staying away from it. Maybe I had too high of expectations and was just disappointed. Maybe I wanted some magical cure - prayer is the only "magical" step, everything else is a mind set and making a plan.

So have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Did it help? Do you have a different favorite book that helps you be the best mommy you can be? I'd love to hear about it!

Reading List Rating:

(Since the rating setup is new to Reading List, let me take a moment and explain - it's 3 cups of coffee like a 3 star rating - not you will need 3 cups of coffee to make it through!)